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THE ADVANTAGE OF TESTING OUR PRINCIPLES, COMPENSATORY OF 
THE EVILS OF SERIOUS TIMES. 



A DISCOURSE 

On Sunday Morning, Feb. 17th, 1861, 

BEFORE THE 

SECOND UNITARIAN SOCIETY 

OF PHILADELPHIA, 



By HENRY W. BELLOWS, D.D., 

FASTOR OF ALL SOULS' CHURCH, NEW YORK. 



PRINTED 15 Y THE SOCIETY. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

C. SHERMAN & SON, PRINTERS. 

1861. 



THE ADVANTAGE OF TESTING OUR PRINCIPLES, COMPENSATORY OF 
THE EVILS OF SERIOUS TIMES. 

A DISCOURSE 

On Sunday Morning, Feb. 17th, 1861, 

BEFORE THE 

SECOND UNITARIAN SOCIETY 

OF PHILADELPHIA, 

/ 

Bt HENRY W. BELLOWS, D.D., 

PASTOR OF ALL SOULS' CHURCH, NEW YORK. 



PRINTED BY THE SOCIETY. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

C. SHERMAN & SON, PRINTERS. 
1861. 



■5" 



DISCOURSE. 



" Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try 
you, as though some strange thing happened unto you ; but rejoice, inas- 
much as ye are partakers of Christ's suffering, that when his glory shall be 
revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy." — 1 Peter, 4 : 12, 13. 

"His truth endureth to all generations." — Psalm 100: 5. 

There is one very great advantage in having ques- 
tions of deep and all-embracing magnitude before the 
public mind ; it tests the reality of principles and in- 
terests that ordinarily are carelessly assumed to be real, 
but are yet treated as if of little practical importance ; 
it banishes apathy and frivolity, crushes into silence 
those who are usually allowed to talk merely for talk- 
ing's sake, brings out the solid sense and hidden wisdom 
of society, and makes the moral and spiritual principles 
that underlie our external life throb with a fresh and 
vigorous pulse. 

Thus, in the usual tranquil and happy condition of 
our affairs, engrossed in the occupations and eagerly 
engaged in profiting by the opportunities of prosperous 
times, Religion, with all its hopes and fears, its obliga- 
tions and promises, its consolations and requirements, 
secures our respectful and generous support, has our 
easy and unexacting faith, but it occupies few of our 



earnest thoughts ; it interferes little with our proceed- 
ings, it does not tax our judgment or try our con- 
sciences, or thrust itself across our path, or assert a 
prominent, practical, and authoritative place in our 
business and daily life. It is left for Sunday. Then 
we are ready to assent to what the proper functionaries 
say about it without serious question. We have con- 
venient theories about its being an interest by itself, 
confined to special times and places and persons. In 
short, we pay it a good deal the same kind of respect 
which in times of ease we pay the laws of the country, 
which make no serious demands upon us, and execute 
their own provisions by a special class of officials, and 
through indirect methods. But, when threatening and 
anxious times come upon us, then all the great realities 
begin to shine out. Citizenship and nationality again 
mean something:. Obedience to law and order asserts 
its original significance. Oaths of office, and solemn 
compacts with man and God, that have been, perhaps, 
lightly and only half-consciously taken, are found to be 
accompanied with solemn practical obligations. The 
loose and thoughtless tackle of things is quickly tight- 
ened up ; the harness of duty makes its reins and traces 
felt. We begin to feel that words mean what they 
read • that things are as they seem ; that life is not the 
holiday affair we ordinarily make it, liberty not the 
careless concern of a shouting multitude, peace not a 
matter of course, war not an item of foreign news ; 
that ideas and principles cost something, are worth 



something, must be maintained, if at all, with some- 
thing besides good wishes and the overflow of our 
superfluity ; that counsel and advice are no longer 
everybody's privilege ; that wisdom is wanted, and is 
worth millions of money ; that talking has grave prac- 
tical responsibilities, and that every idle word is now 
likely to be brought to its account. 

My brethren, it is most important, every now and 
then, that the air should be cleared of that mist which, 
in the sun of external prosperity, exhales from the low 
places of our nature — a brilliant mist, in which things 
do not appear as they are, when the fog obliterates 
the rivers and the landmarks, hides all the foundations, 
and leaves only the filmy tops of things visible. Affairs 
may be too easy, comfortable, and peaceful for our own 
real good. The social, moral, and political atmosphere 
becomes debilitating in a protracted summer — the civic 
tissues are softened, the spiritual muscles relax, the 
vision grows dull, the senses inert, and the nobler appe- 
tites decay. A wintry season tones up the common 
moral constitution, braces the intellect to its discrimi- 
nating powers, nerves the will, clears the conscience, 
and starts the hunger and thirst of the soul for its ap- 
propriate food. We live the largest part of our time 
under erroneous impressions of the relative importance 
of things. We derive our comfort or happiness, or 
think we do, from secondary sources. All our care and 
attention is expended upon transitory and private in- 
terests. The grand old scriptural teachings on these 



6 

matters : " What shall it profit a man to gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul 1" " The things that 
are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are 
eternal;" "Man does not live by bread alone, but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God ;" 
" For as the body is one, and hath many members, and 
all the members of that one body, being many, are one 
body: so also is Christ;" these great words seem to us 
then to belong only to solemn times and great characters 
long passed away. They are on a high, heroic vein, suited 
to martyrs and confessors, but not to a plain, homespun, 
work-a-day, nineteenth century ! But now and then, 
and always somewhere in the world, circumstances 
exist, amid which the antique and picturesque, the un- 
real or romantic characters of these teachings is wholly 
lost in a sense of their modern, immediate, and press- 
ing truth ; when all their unearthly and ghostly aspect 
is done away, and they step forth clothed in simple, 
practical reality, to be the guidance, inspiration, and 
consolation of our very contemporaries. " The times 
that try men's souls" are the times that make men 
know they have souls ; that God lives and reigns ; that 
ideas, affections, and principles, duties and responsibili- 
ties are the eternal realities, the true sources of our 
happiness, the things on which to depend, for which 
to strive, and with which to identify ourselves. 

Righteousness, the fear of God, the sense of duty, 
the guardianship of justice, the promotion of truth, the 
vindication of humanity — these are not brave words 



wherewith to deck out the orator's harangue, and please 
the sentimental feelings of those who never think of 
putting them into actions ! They stand for sober, grave, 
vast, ay, crushing realities. They are corners of the 
rock, against which, if any man fall, it shall dash him 
in pieces, and on whom, if it falls, it shall grind him 
to powder. 

This is not wholly a world of eating, and drinking, 
and dressing — of houses, and farms, and stocks — of 
peace and plenty, and laughter and tears. It is also a 
world of ideas and principles, of obligations and duties. 
God, as the moral governor of the universe, is here 
present in the human conscience — an unchangeable 
right and wrong have their eternal witnesses among us 
— a mighty retributive system pervades affairs. It is 
a world in which selfishness, sloth, self-indulgence, 
frivolity, inhumanity, moral apathy, wickedness, reck- 
lessness, although permitted a certain tether, are not 
allowed to go beyond fixed bounds, any more than the 
ocean is allowed to leave its stormy bed. Be sure it is 
against some of these solemn realities we have run 
whenever our system is shaken to its very centre as by 
an earthquake. We have reached, at such times, the 
point where God's providence yields no further — where 
his truth will not give way another hair's-breadth. 
The eternal things — the great solid framework which 
partakes not of the mobility and elasticity of the merely 
accidental and changing parts of our life, then refuses 
to make way for anything, be the consequences what 



8 

they may. Men stand aghast to find that they and their 
immediate schemes and temporal interests are not the 
sole occupants of this planet; that God has a problem of 
his own here — a plan and purpose which runs through 
the ages ; and that he has agents of his own — primeval 
ideas, grand original impulses, moral convictions, eter- 
nal verities, which are always moving forward and 
carrying out his invincible decrees. Every now and 
then the great general plan of God's providence con- 
fronts and runs directly across our private plans, as the 
Gulf Stream runs against the course of a vessel seeking 
a-Southern harbor. We find that the world's common 
interests, and our national, or state, or town, or private 
interests, are not in harmony, nay, are antagonistic. 
If, then, we proudly determine to put our smaller and 
less important scheme foremost — to carry it by force 
against the general scheme of Divine Providence — we 
find out, after a short experience, how hard it is to kick 
against the pricks — how frightful is the fate of those 
who run upon the bosses of God's buckler ! Then it is 
that war, and pestilence, and famine, and hatreds, and 
the whole terrible brood of social evils, break forth as 
from a den of wild beasts, to punish the obstinacy and 
blasphemy of men. If we dare to call evil good • to 
make His Holy Word an abettor and indorser of our 
crimes ; to smother conscience, or quench the light to 
hide our cupidity, we find that the substantial verities 
on which our nature rests, and on which God's moral 
world reposes, turn accusers and avengers, will not lend 



themselves to our plans nor be silent under our perver- 
sions. 

Nor is it only our wilful offences that meet resistance 
from God's providence. Our great mistakes (mistakes 
involving the happiness of millions now living or to 
come) encounter, sooner or later, a formidable opposi- 
tion from these divine realities. We do not make things 
right or wrong by thinking them so. They are what 
they are in themselves. Our motives decide our per- 
sonal and our relative guilt, but do not settle the abso- 
lute quality of our actions. We may be innocent in 
our folly, but our folly does not cease on that account 
to invoke its natural and providential consequences. 
History pays a terrible price for its experience, and 
national mistakes provoke, sooner or later, a correction 
which is costly in exact proportion to their magnitude. 
No age or generation need expect to escape God's 
ceaseless though patient vindication of his own truth — 
a truth which endureth to all generations. It is not 
man's will that makes the worst revolutions in society. 
They come of the moral nature of things, which though 
having a certain vis inertias, possesses also an inevitable 
motion when pressed beyond a given point. The rain 
does not, at a certain pitch, more surely break from 
the overcharged clouds, than the majesty of God's 
violated laws and principles breaks out of the bondage 
in which men's blindness and selfishness have sought to 
shut them up. It is this potent element of self-vindi- 
cation which gives so sublime a reality to truth and 



10 

justice, and which every now and then appals a guilty 
nation or government, or confronts a mistaken and 
foolish policy to induce it to correct and to undo its 
fatal errors. 

The fiery trial through which we are now passing, 
my brethren, is destined to purge us of much dross, to 
consume the hay and stubble of our self-righteousness, 
to devour much that is merely fictitious and unreal 
in our opinions, pretensions and professions. It is 
destined to test our solidity in every way — to show 
what our patriotism, our principle, our policy as a 
nation, our commercial wisdom, our real resources, our 
present wisdom in the conduct of life, our average 
morals and intelligence, to use the language of the 
market, our par of character is. We are in the habit 
of praising ourselves in all these particulars. We 
claim a high standard. We think proudly of our reli- 
gious, social and political intelligence and worth. If 
we are not deceived in these respects, there can be 
little to fear. If we are deceived, it is best to know it. 
I do not doubt that the general level of our national 
character is one to be proud of; but I am equally 
convinced that we have run into many errors and ex- 
travagances both of opinion, of conduct and of speech, 
which are now to be brought under serious correction. 

First, our life is too external — too much engrossed 
with the mere accumulation of the materials of living. 
We say m often enough, but it produces little effect. 
By a universal habit of the nation — we dread any 






11 

threatened deficiency in external comforts and appear- 
ances beyond any people in the world. We struggle 
harder for social position, luxury, and ostentation. It 
has given an immense impulse to our industry and 
rolled up our wealth most rapidly — nay, it is the 
natural result of our peculiar political organization, and 
in many respects one of its great blessings. I have no 
careless, sweeping censure to bring on the thrift and 
money-making dispositions of our people ; for I believe 
in comfort and equality, and think social ambition and 
pride of personal position among the most useful and 
necessary traits of a people. But they involve serious 
dangers, like all great general influences— not except- 
ing the best — for even religious zeal tends to fanaticism, 
and the dangers of this tendency have already been ex- 
tensively felt and proved widely disastrous. I am not 
certain that some very heavy drain on our property, 
some very serious interruption to our business, some 
powerful necessity for learning that our private interests 
are subordinate to the public welfare, is not absolutely 
necessary to restore a proper perspective to our view 
of what is really important, useful, and felicitating in 
this our mortal life. A life of ease, abundance, luxury ; 
or a life of scheming, calculating, and money-getting, 
are really not dignified, not ennobling, not desirable. 
We overrate immensely the worth of luxury, and 
we are not aware how much we lose in making so 
much even of comfort. If you can substitute vital 
thoughts, lively emotions, large and generous sympa- 



12 

thies, pure and high tastes, for the more selfish and 
calculating occupations of men, you increase their 
happiness quite as much as you improve their charac- 
ters. Now, if only some great shock to our national 
prosperity can shake men out of the ruts and furrows, 
where they lose sight of each other as living minds 
and hearts — where the great and eternal interests of 
truth, humanity, honor, and worth are hidden from 
their view — then it is in mercy that God sends it, in 
whatever form it may come. How much of the heart 
and soul of this nation is sick with the torpor and sus- 
pension of its nobler instincts and the decay of its 
more generous attributes! The love and pursuit of 
money, the trading spirit, has sadly impaired the moral 
enthusiasm, darkened the conscience, and clouded over 
the domestic affections of the land. See the terrible 
judicial blindness it has brought upon the South — 
perverting all its perceptions of policy, of political 
economy, of morals and religion, and revealing at the 
present moment a general state of things not less 
melancholy than slavery itself. And see, too, and feel, 
how much of degeneracy from our original dignity, 
simplicity, and happiness, it has entailed upon the 
North. 

I overheard in the cars recently a story, the truth 
of which I do not vouch for, although it was told 
as a fact ; but, true or not, the principles it involves 
are unquestionable and pertinent here. Two years 
ago, a young man of a small but independent for- 



13 

tune in his own right, an only son, the sole heir of 
a rich father and grandfather, with whom he lived, 
suddenly disappeared from a hotel in one of our cities, 
where he had arrived from home only the night before ; 
and, after diligent search, continued wholly untraced. 
As his clothes and a considerable sum of money were 
found in his trunk, and as he was a sober, discreet, and 
virtuous young man, a graduate of a college, without 
known sources of disquietude, no possible theory of 
his disappearance could be raised, excepting that he 
had been murdered by some one acquainted with his 
possession of money, and thinking it to be upon his 
person. A year passed away, and after sincere mourn- 
ing, his estate was administered upon as on one certainly 
dead. Another year passes by, and he is suddenly 
heard from in Australia, keeping school for a bare 
living in the wilds of that world, newer than our own ! 
What could account for his extraordinary disappear- 
ance ? The supposition of the reciter of the tale was, 
that he had run away from his money and expectations j 
that seeing that his father and grandfather had both 
turned into mere money-getters, talked of little but 
money, and loaded the atmosphere of home with its 
dust ; seeing, too, that they were neither of them made 
happy, or otherwise than lowered in his own respect 
and esteem by their possessions, he had come to dread 
the fatal consequences of wealth; and, afraid of his own 
heart, had privately run away from his fortune and 
expectations, to escape its threatening ruin to all 



14 

his nobler aspirations and the real happiness of his 
life. 

Truth is stranger than fiction. But whether this 
be true or no, I have known hundreds of persons who 
would have been wise to have followed such an ex- 
ample — hundreds cursed by their luxuries, their pos- 
sessions, and their cupidity. And I am inclined to 
think, that any calamity, which should in an unmis- 
takable way test the question whether so much of 
everything, so much time, thought, feeling, anxiety 
exhausted in worldly cares, is really necessary to true 
well being, would be a great benefit to the land — might 
make us aware that we were neglecting great and 
priceless blessings to cherish small and temporary 
interests — might show us that our true riches lie 
buried in neglect, while we run panting after false 
wealth. Do not suppose that I am thinking only of those 
technical riches which are ordinarily classed by them- 
selves under the name of our religious hopes and ex- 
pectations. I am thinking now of domestic affections, 
intellectual cultivation, tastes for nature, enjoyment of 
human society, interest in high and universal things — 
the love of literature, of human progress, and of 
humanity. Whatever makes real and significant, and 
brings home to our honest experience, the eternal 
truth, that " man does not live by bread alone, but by 
every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God," 
is of vital and priceless service. 



15 

Again, I am afraid that the significance of duty is 
also under a serious national cloud, which the present 
crisis in our affairs is providentially designed to 
remove. Who can deny that a certain laxity of con- 
science, a careless sense of obligation, a feeble respect 
for promises, a light view of oaths, has been growing 
among us % I will not point to our municipal affairs, 
to our defaulting officers in all departments, to the bri- 
bery and corruption of officials — I am sick of that 
theme. But it does seem to me, that the general 
tendency of the national feeling, in almost all the 
practical concerns of life, has been gradually becoming 
averse to any very stringent sense of responsibility — 
inclined to think that nothing is binding which is not 
pleasant, to put loose constructions on obligations of 
all sorts, and thus to impair reliance on the word 
of mechanics, on the promises of politicians, on the 
credibility of newspapers, on the oaths of office, on the 
punctiliousness of private character ! Laxity of views 
and feelings, self-indulgent tastes, wide and unscrupu- 
lous interpretations of instruments, and a feeble sense 
of general responsibility as citizens and tradesmen, as 
husbands and fathers, alarmingly prevail. Oaths, 
vows, promises, compacts — these are all sealed with 
the conscience and witnessed by God, and if the sight 

of them is dimmed, or the feeling of them is dulled 

woe to the people, woe to the world. It does seem to 
me that we may account it a necessary and a thank- 
worthy interposition of Providence that our impending 



16 

condition is testing the conscience of the highest and 
the lowest functionary — trying, as with fire, the 
worth of oaths — demanding under fearful penalties the 
fulfilment of obligations — drawing everywhere on the 
sense of the bonds we have verbally owned, and com- 
pelling us to feel that a close, punctilious, thorough 
fidelity to each and every promise is exacted by the 
God of oaths and the Sovereign of duty. This is a 
world of duty. Duty is not always pleasant, but it 
is always dignified, noble, and sanative. If we live 
the slipshod, lax, and unamenable life of the easy and 
careless in conscience, we shall meet the storm with 
unstayed rigging, with sails all fluttering in the wind, 
with anchors foul, and rudder unshipped. And the 
storm that vexes the state, or sweeps away our fortunes, 
is nothing to that whirlwind that will finally tear and 
make shipwrecks of our souls — if their purposes, 
affections, and tendencies are not closely reefed at 
every point in the cords of duty. 

Another trial awaits us — intensely needed ! The 
last twenty years has seen more reckless talking — 
more looseness of tongue in respect of Religion, the 
State, the Constitution, the personal character of lead- 
ing men — more insulting, inflammatory, censorious 
and unscrupulous eloquence on platforms, in pulpits, 
in the Senate and on the floor of Congress — more 
questioning of motives, defamation of good men's cha- 
racters, reckless assertion and indiscriminate statements, 



17 

than was ever before known since civilization began. 
I sincerely think that irresponsible and careless speech 
on great public questions is a terrible evil; and I 
do not believe that it can go on for a whole generation 
without debilitating the public patriotism, the comity, 
the habits of self-control, the charity, and the con- 
science of a people. Nor do I think that its perpetrators 
can finally and forever escape the retribution due to 
their thoughtlessness, injustice, and intemperance. 

Public opinion is responsible for the license it has al- 
lowed and flattered in this respect. We are now com- 
pelled to endure the natural and appropriate penalties 
of being confounded in our opinions with those whose 
excesses have amused and charmed our love of spicy 
exaggeration, and whom we have not reproved by any 
courageous censure or any sturdy remonstrance. If 
there be not now a wholesome reaction, which leaves 
these reckless tramplers on our national compact and on 
the characters and motives of all who disagree with 
their absurdities to the condignest of all punishments 
for such men, I mean neglect, then some worse thing 
will happen to teach us that the tongue is a fire, and 
that for every idle word that men shall speak, there is a 
retribution, which will not wait for futurity. Free 
speech, in God's name, let us vindicate ; but reckless 
speech is the highest offence against free speech, as in- 
fidelity is the greatest shame to free inquiry. The 
freer we are, in all things, the more amenable must we 
grow to every law of charity and truth and piety. 



18 

Last of all, a test is now applying itself with fiery 
severity to the religions opinions of this nation. The 
questions at issue between the Literalists and Spiri- 
tualists — between those that think the element of au- 
thority and those who think essential and absolute truth 
the most important element in a religion — between those 
who make the Bible a rule of belief and those who make 
it a fountain of faith — are now becoming of immense 
and immediate practical importance. The Bible, on one 
side of Mason and Dixon's line, is the great bulwark 
of slaveholding ; on the other, the great arsenal of 
liberty. Dr. Fuller proves, without difficulty, that slave- 
holding is countenanced in the Old and even the New 
Testament. Dr. Cheever has the ingenuity and adroit- 
ness to show that this was not our particular kind of 
slaveholding ; and thence, with great pungency and 
power, shows that the Bible condemns the American in- 
stitution. In my judgment, it is only a very dangerous 
and untenable view of the nature of the Scriptures and 
the quality of their authority which makes this question 
important. Infidels are made by claiming a divine sup- 
port for any opinions which contradict the most ad- 
vanced moral sentiments of our nature. Dr. Van Dyke 
is right when he says that anti-slavery opinions lead to 
infidelity, he being the judge of faith. They are mak- 
ing the faith which he conscientiously holds, and with 
great propriety, from his own point of view, defends, 
incredible. The South is right in charging the North 
with infidelity, if its use of the Scriptures to uphold 



19 

slavery as a divine institution is a proper use of them. 
Because, if the Bible does teach this, and if it be 
plenarily and verbally inspired, we must take our choice 
between believing it or becoming infidels ; and the 
North, as a rule, has made its choice. It would prefer 
to be infidel in the eyes of all who think God orders or 
approves slavery as a permanent institution in the nine- 
teenth century. But it, of course, wholly repudiates 
that understanding or theory of the Bible, which makes 
no distinction between its divine spirit and its human 
form, between its general animus and its particular and 
exceptional parts. But there is such a gross inconsis- 
tency here in the North yet existing between the 
grounds on which Christian men act, and the grounds 
on which they profess to stand, between their conscien- 
tious practical opinions and their avowed religious and 
scriptural theories, that, in my judgment, some serious 
calamity, involving these radical questions, can alone 
clear up this injurious inconsistency, and compel men 
to discrimination, coherency, and consistency in their 
theological, scriptural, and religious views. The pros- 
pect of an honest and radical discussion of the gravest 
moral and religious questions, conducted in the face of 
practical interests, was never so good as now, nor was 
it ever so important. 

All these cloudy questions, so stormily and passion- 
ately debated, without reference to fundamental prin- 
ciples, and, therefore, hitherto vainly, touching the 
connection between politics and religion, the relative 



20 

value of philanthropy and piety, the relations of the 
Church and the World, the connection of theology and 
religion, the nature of inspiration, the difference between 
essential and relative wrong, or evil and sin — these ques- 
tions will be made pertinent, real, pressing, by the testing 
strain of serious times. They will be discussed in the 
light of events, and with the courage, keenness, and 
earnestness, which already begins to mark the assertions 
and the statements of both sides in the great controversy 
of the clay ; and it is worth almost any price to bring 
back earnestness, to get the mind and heart of the 
nation where they will stick fast by convictions, and 
cannot help feeling the force of truth. It is at a great 
heat only that the chains of superstition and prestige 
and custom, are melted. The world, by a heroic impulse, 
moves every now and then one great stride forward, as 
at the Reformation ; but all the nobler powers must be 
roused by great events before this glorious earnestness, 
this high manhood, this divine courage, can be deve- 
loped. If such fine gold as this may come out of the 
crucible which God is heating seven times hot, for this 
nation, " Beloved, think it not strange concerning the 
fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange 
thing had happened to you: but rejoice, inasmuch as 
ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when his 
glory shall be revealed ye may be glad also with ex- 
ceeding joy." 






